‘Historic’, is how party leader Reinier van Dantzig (D66) calls the new ‘Tourism in Balance’ regulation that was adopted in the city council last week. It states that there may be a maximum of twenty million tourist overnight stays in Amsterdam every year. If there are more, the municipality must intervene. Amsterdam therefore sets a limit to the number of tourists, all thanks to a citizens’ initiative that was started last summer.
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Jasper van Dijk was one of the initiators of the petition last June Amsterdam has a choice. It states that Amsterdammers are fed up with the extreme increase in the number of tourists. The municipality must return to between ten and fourteen million overnight tourist stays per year, and intervene if this number is exceeded.
“Our starting point was the number of overnight stays for tourists. In the end, day-trippers were also added. This must also be monitored, as well as the quality of life in various neighbourhoods. If this comes under pressure, action must be taken,” says Jasper.
30,000 signatures
The initiators collected more than 30,000 signatures in two weeks. So the City Council had to consider it. Now a year later, the regulation ‘Tourism in Balance’ has been issued, thanks to the citizen. And that is special, says the party leader of D66, Reinier van Dantzig.
“Historic that we have succeeded in adopting such a regulation from the people of Amsterdam. The strength of this regulation is that we have agreed with each other how many tourists we actually think are good for Amsterdam. Both the minimum level and the maximum level.”
Maximum level
The bottom line is that Amsterdam must intervene if the number of annual tourist overnight stays exceeds twenty million (and therefore not above ten or fourteen million, as stated in the citizens’ initiative). The regulation does not specify exactly which measures the city must then take, but think of the well-known hobbyhorses, such as limiting Airbnb, for example, increasing the tourist tax or making the Red Light District less attractive for the loud tourists.
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The city must also intervene if the number of overnight tourists falls below ten million. And that makes sense, says Van Dantzig. “Such a lower limit is quite important because everyone now sees that there are far too few visitors in Amsterdam. Corona has of course wreaked havoc. That means empty hotels, but also that our cultural institutions are really having a hard time. So first we have to make sure. “We make sure that we get the tourists, who really come for the beautiful city, back to Amsterdam. But we must not let it get out of hand. So if we get too close to the upper limit, we have to take measures to prevent that.”
First city
According to initiator Jasper, Amsterdam may well be the first city in the world to set a limit to the number of tourists. “The city really has to look ahead, start predicting how many tourists want to come to Amsterdam. And so think: ‘okay, isn’t this too much, what can we do about it?’. And until now, people have never really looked ahead. every time was like ‘oh, there are more this year’ I personally prefer to see the lowest possible number of tourist nights per year, but you have to find a compromise and we are very happy that we succeeded. It is an important first step.”
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